Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a method of estimating a print time of a print job.
Description of the Related Art
Upon receiving a print job from an external apparatus, the image forming apparatus interprets page description language (PDL) data included in the print job, and determines an output sheet onto which an image is to be printed. Then, the image forming apparatus rasterizes the PDL data into a bitmap image. Thereafter, the image forming apparatus prints an image based on the bitmap image onto the output sheet. It is beneficial to estimate the time required for this print processing sequence prior to print processing being executed and to present the estimated time to the user. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-063951 discloses a method of using information (sheet type, number of copies, double/single sided printing) set for the print job to estimate the time required to execute the print processing of a print job, prior to the execution of print processing.
However, there are cases where the setting information for the print job is updated with regard to a specific page included in the print job. Specifically, there are cases where the setting information for the specific page and the setting information for the print job excluding the specific page are different. In the case of such a print job, pages that have different settings cannot be reflected in the estimated time, and the accuracy of the estimated time obtained by using the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-063951 is reduced.